An unofficial blog about the National Museum of Health and Medicine (nee the Army Medical Museum) in Silver Spring, MD. Visit for news about the museum, new projects, musing on the history of medicine and neat pictures.

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Thursday, September 5, 2013

The Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery's Office of Medical History is uploading their 1000th item to the Medical Heritage Library (http://www.medicalheritage.org/ ). Oddly enough, the item, a logbook from Dr. James Ambler, is not medical. Instead it documents polar weather conditions.

In 1883, Lieutenants Giles B. Harber and William H. Schuetze journeyed to Siberia's Lena Delta to retrieve the bodies and personal effects of the crew of USS Jeannette, an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole. Among the remains was the body of Passed Assistant Surgeon James Markham Ambler (1848-1881), his personal journal and a logbook of atmospheric conditions that he maintained throughout the expedition (1879-1881). One hundred and thirty years later, Dr. Ambler's journal and weather observations, in the respective collections of the National Archives (NARA) and the Bureau of Medicine (BUMED), are to be used in the "Old Weather" project (http://www.oldweather.org/ ) headed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and NARA. BUMED's historians brought the logbook to NARA which photographed it in 2012. Volunteers at the "Old Weather" project, which uses Navy logs to track climate, should soon finish the official deck logs and be able to work on transcribing Ambler's log (http://www.oldweather.org/ships/50a27fd77438ae05bd000002 ).

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Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Guide to the Collections of the NMHM 2014 (pdf link)

Disclaimer

The opinion or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology or the National Museum of Health and Medicine.